leading naturalists thought the fossil evidence presented a significant obstacle to Darwin’s theory. At the time, perhaps the best place to investigate the lowest known strata of fossils was Wales, and one of its leading experts was Roderick Impey Murchison, who named the earliest geologic period the Silurian after an ancient Welsh tribe. Five years before On the Origin of Species, he called attention to the sudden appearance of complex designs like the compound eyes of the first trilobites, creatures already thriving at the apparent dawn of animal life. For him, this discovery ruled out the
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